


A Trick of the Light

by Corehealer



Category: Ascian - Fandom, Final Fantasy XIV, Shadowbringers - Fandom
Genre: Blood Drinking, Eldritch, F/M, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Gen, Light Dom/sub, Monsters, Multiple Orgasms, Other, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Pining, Romantic Soulmates, Shapeshifting, Soul Bond, Soul Sex, Tenderness, Tentacle Sex, shadow sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27930139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corehealer/pseuds/Corehealer
Summary: My first attempt at providing sustenance to my dear monsterfucking friends, having been given this idea by Celestial_txt and JanuaryBlue and becoming enamored to work on it in a fit of inspiration. A lot of romantic sap and pining, followed by a lot of monster forms and soul fucking and shadow tentacles. The good stuff. 5.0/5.3 spoilers, shifting perspectives, primarily narrative third person. FWoL reader insert.Hades has been rendered shredded and torn by his encounter with the Warrior of Light and the Scions, but instead of dying, has managed to just barely escape into the shadows of his phantom Amaurot, there to recover his strength and ruminate upon the revelation that the Warrior is his dearly cherished lover and friend, Azem. As the hero and her companions conclude their adventures on the First, he looks on from afar in longing, growing more eager to reach out to her with time.The Warrior eventually comes looking for him in the city, searching for answers and whatever else he might yet offer her. In this place, she finds him not quite in the altogether, and attempts to discover in full the nature of his true existence, and that of her own heritage as Azem.Mild violence warning for this piece.
Relationships: Azem & Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Original Character(s), Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Reader, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	A Trick of the Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JanuaryBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanuaryBlue/gifts), [celestial_txt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestial_txt/gifts).



_< <A keening ache. A long time gone, now returned._

_She wanders your city, ancient one. Won’t you reach out to her?_

_But that would be improper… the Ardor yet demands this of me._

_But what does your heart demand? Your **soul**?>>_

The phantom Amaurot, extension of his will, placed within the Caliban Gap, far from prying mortal eyes save for fearful Ondo. Lights glimmering in the abyssal mire, a memory of elder days. Exacting detail, but still so little of its former glory.

Here she wanders, that hero of the Source. She comes in search of answers. She wants to remember. Far from her friends, from the hollow comforts of the world above, she comes to find herself. Here alone she wanders, weary of the long road. Weary of the tangle of their lives. She wants to see what lies on this far edge of fate.

She wants to see him again.

His mind whispers to him in the Ancient tongue.

**_Hades speaks…_ **

_< <Why do you resist her fragrance?_

_Why do you deny yourself this one relenting?_

_For the taste of days long gone? She would be yours forever more._

_What other thing could there be, in all the world, more important than **her**?>>_

She grows closer now, to where he has sequestered himself, footsteps echoing in the canyonlike expanses between buildings, bearing silent witness. He hesitates, hiding in the shadows, watching. Seeing what she’ll do. What she will discover in the city’s memory. In streets she once strode in his company, in that happier age.

With time, Hythlodaeus comes to her, as do other shades, but he alone provides her with something of worth; the stone of memory. Her office. Her ‘name’. Some scant details. Things to whet her appetite, like as not. Even this does not give her reason to depart in satisfaction, however.

She craves yet more knowledge. No matter where it may lead. Hydaelyn be damned. She’s come this far, after all. What’s a little farther, for his sake?

Her voice spoken in monologue now, muttering to herself, the stone’s locked secrets unfurling in distorted cadence in her mind.

“Azem… what did I mean to you? What did you mean to me?”

Her hands seem to pan around, looking for something, not entirely there.

**_Where_ is she? _When_ is she? _Who_ is she?**

_< <She sings to me. A sundered memory, and yet, she is the same._

_The only star in our sky. But to reach out and claim her…_

_But how? How can we claim her? She is no longer our equal. She does not remember._

_Then make her your equal. Show her how. Claim her soul. Guide her to **your door** …>>_

She calls out at last, sensing something amiss. Perhaps she has remembered more than he had dared to hope. She can see you, even now, in your vulnerability. But she plays along.

“I want to speak with you, Emet-Selch. You departed err we could share words together. I knew you’d be here… despite our past conflicts, I want to talk.”

He is not quite as cool and collected as he was above, following their last meeting. Following their battle, and the relenting of his will to fight. Retreating into the shadows to regain his composure and his aether, he had not expected her to linger long on the First, now bereft of its Scions and its long suffering Light. She had done so much to save this wayward shard. Why would she return?

“I know you’re here. Come out!”

But return she now has. Looking for him. Stubborn little soul she is. Just like always.

He continues to watch as she approaches closer and closer, slowly and cautiously but disinclined to heed any instinct to withdraw. How he wishes to hold her close. It takes every bit of his remaining strength to hold back, now that she is visible and speaking. But how long can he hold out?

“Hades!”

Not very long, it would seem…

His name. His true name. She remembered it. The straw that breaks his resolve. He falters, and shadows pour forth from him in fits, snaking things that draw out from him and trace lines behind her, just beyond her sight, trying to place themselves along the path she had taken and drink her residue.

Intoxicatingly close now… he hadn’t known such flavours in thousands of years. She is an oasis after an eternity in the deserts of this misbegotten world. The texture of the soul unmistakable. Irresistible to him.

She sees in the corner of her eyes now, the telltale signs of his passing, those flighting shadows darting betwixt the trailing light of the sea’s surface far above. The city’s lights have been dimmed by his will, leaving this approach dark. A deterrent, not that it would keep her from him.

His mind aches and panics, drawing the shadows back, savouring what they bring as she continues forward anew, now surer of her choices. He can see her smirking. Just like she always did.

_< <Take her. You will have no other chance. You are already **lost**.>>_

Nothing for it now then, but to try. Zodiark’s long gone, severed in their battle from His servant. And she seems determined to ignore her vile Mother. It’s just him and her.

He clears his throat, drawing her attention.

“ _I had not expected to see you again so soon, hero… I must admit, you have me at a disadvantage_.”

“Oho, well, isn’t that a pleasant change of pace. Come out, let us speak.”

“ _You’ll forgive me if I prefer to linger here for the nonce… I am not ‘entirely’ myself_.”

“Fallen to pieces after the auracite? I can help you pick them all up, if you’d like.”

How glib. Another familiarity. The stone’s doing? Or her own?

“ _Mmm, not quite. I am more whole then I was immediately after our little duel, in fact, but… let us say the experience was more ‘eye opening’ for me than expected_.”

She catches a glimpse of him now, hidden in the shadows of the Capitol, up the stairs she begins to climb, ocean churning above them. All else is silent, the shades having departed from the stage.

He wears a robe, not unlike the Convocation ones of eld, different from his Ascian attire. Matte black and trimmed with white filigree. It is hooded and crowned as he was in their duel, a ring around his head, arched and black and halo-like. His face is half shrouded in the blue light of the sea. His golden eye… and then an array of eyes upon the other half, in the darkness. These glow red, and regard her only for a moment before disappearing, closing with a start.

He wears a tentative simpering smile, but only just, as his golden eye turns down, unable to hold contact with her.

“I see… can’t keep your mask on anymore, can you?”

She taunts him, seemingly unperturbed. What’s a few more eyes between dear friends?

A step forward, towards where his shadow lingers. His sole, normal eye gazing out at her, longingly. She raises a hand to him.

“Come now, we’ve no more reason to fight any longer, do we? You saw something in me, in the flames of this place you made. You made it for me, did you not? There must have been a good reason for it.”

“ _Guilty as charged, hero. You are the good reason… too good by far now, for this miserable old fool_.”

“Miserable? Just because you were beaten by a girl? A malformed creature? I thought you at least held some more pride than that, Hades…”

She speaks like she knows him, once more. Bypasses his defenses already weakened by her earlier actions as if they were vellum soaked in the rain. He shudders now, shivering but not from the cold ocean floor. Her familiarity. Her voice. Her soul, seemingly brighter than before, brighter than any other shard, any other shade or memory. More alike to how she was. What he remembers.

What she increasingly remembers.

“Please, let us talk as we used to do. The stone our friend gave me at your behest is giving me insight but… I need more. I want to hear these truths from your lips.”

She stopped before the edge of the light, mere ilms from him now. He stands still, his red eyes now open again to regard her in full alongside his yellow one. White hair, alike to how it was in the days of the city, peeking out from under the hood. She takes him in as he gradually, tentatively begins to step forth, a slight limp, into the light before her, his back clinging to the shadows. His legs seem gone, replaced by a mass of darkness, smoky and indistinct, the tendrils from before providing locomotion.

His hands are claws, alike to the grey grasping limbs he sported in the fullness of his power. They now rest at his sides, limp. He sighs, looking down at the ground, unable to meet her piercing gaze.

“ _Like what you see, hero_?”

“It’s certainly different, I’ll give you that. But not unwelcome. I saw you at your worst. This seems closer to your best, even if its somewhere in between with all your masks.”

“ _How right you are, as ever_.”

Another step closer now, towards him.

“Why do you hide yourself from me? Because of this?” She gestured at his arms, his tendrils meekly clinging to his back. His eyes.

“You think I’d come all the way down here just to be put off by your appearance? You wound me, Hades.”

“ _Aha, I think you beat me to the punch on that front, hero_.” His claws spreading wide the robe’s shroud a bit to reveal the place where she had driven the auracite inward, and broken through with Ardbert’s axe. The wound healed over but with slightly glowing purple crystal now peeking out.

“Would kissing it better help?”

“ _Perhaps…_ ”

Coy tones, playing with one another. Tension beginning to relax. He desires her more and more than he ever did before, above, among the push and pull of fleeting lives. The duel had showed her to him in the fullness of her power. Sundered, but striving and eclipsing them all, himself included.

Her hand now reaching out. Placed upon the crystals of his chest, stroking over them slowly. His eyes closed, a slight moaning.

“Struck a nerve?”

“ _Shhh… just… continue. Please_.”

Both hands now, placed upon the crystal, gently running exploratory fingers over its rough edges and iridescent surface. Tracing every inch of his exposed heart, eliciting after several moments a series of plaintive whimpers, and more than a few tears. Her hands a relief. A comforting warmth.

In this reaction she is emboldened, and begins to reach around beyond the wound and the crystal to graze his skin and the shadowy tendrils that attend the remains of his flesh.

His eyes open, lighting up brighter now, and softening as they take her in once more. Savouring her touch.

“ _A ceaseless wanderer as ever, my dear. You wish to turn your gaze upon this wretched thing? This hells blasted spawn of your hopes and dreams_?”

“Well, when you put it that way, how could I refuse?”

A chuckle. His voice hoarse now and echoing, half distant, carrying a hint of his true form.

She is persistent. More than you had dared to dream. This isn’t a dream, is it?

A clawed hand now from beneath the hems of the robe’s sleeves, weathered with age. Sharp, but for her, a gentle bite, now regarding her flush cheeks. It gives the answer, telling him now of her reality. No dream, only her.

She smiles at him. Not a hint of fear, no judgement. Resistance rapidly fading in the light of her sun, the center of his world.

“It’s been a long time, Hades.”

“ _Far, far too long, my dear_.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Couldn’t you see? Couldn’t you let me see?”

“ _In truth? T’was not just Zodiark. I was afraid. Afraid it had been too long. That you had forgotten me, like so much else, and saw me only as your enemy. Another threat to be defeated and cast aside. Another monster to slay_.”

One of his claws found its way to her shoulder, caressed by her hair, as the other remained upon her cheek.

“ _How could I hope to be anything more? I’ve long since ceased to be the man you loved_.”

“I think I’ll be the judge of that, beloved one.”

His head rose with a start at this, from where it had once again sank. She was now beaming, her eyes crested with tears of her own. She was remembering more with every second of this exchange. Far more than even the stone could give. Far more than the battle had suggested.

The lover’s moon had once waned, but now began to wax full bright, far, far above. Not too late for mercy’s stroke as she continued her ministrations on his chest. His tendrils all the while creeping along her feet and legs, kissing every single nerve.

“Your little friends seem full sure of themselves. And yet you seem withdrawn. Have I offended? Or are you simply surprised?”

“ _Moreso the latter. The only offense the remaining pallor of your soul, so close and yet so far from being whole, stuck fast in such a shriveled husk as this. You once held within you the potential of our complete existence. A form like this_.”

A little more of the façade falling away, as his hood gave way to reveal his head, his hair white with darkness emptying out from behind. From within and behind his ears, tiny purple crystals were embedded, cresting his earlobe. His face a duality of two selves, one a mask of duty firm of purpose, the other barely held together aether now flowing free in shadowy tendrils, each possessed of a red eye, glued to his skull.

At this exposure she gasped a little before catching herself, a reaction that in turn elicited from him another series of shudders, and from the purple crystal now oozed a sticky purple substance. The raw pooling aether of his soul, seeking to try and repair him. It flowed lazily down his heart and chest, and out of his ears.

She watched as the substance made its way down into the folds of his robe, lower and lower, as she continued, regaining composure.

“Even for the lack of it, I think my body will serve well enough. And knowing you, I’m sure you have a trick or two to help us overcome any lingering problems of compatibility.”

He was practically leaking onto her and still, **_still_ **she wanted him.

Remaining distance between them was now closed as she followed his grey arms inward, toward the heart. Her clothes loosened slightly as the tendrils moved around within them, and around them. Her eyes fluttered a bit at their movement, gracing ever so close to unseen realms, beginning to become wet.

“If you move for me, I’ll move for you. However you want. However you need. It’s the least I could do, for helping me to see with eyes unclouded…”

Still he hesitates, even now, to draw back the curtain fully. Afraid of her reaction. She’s right here, in his arms, his claws. In his tendrils, snaking along her skin. Hands now gathering anew around his exposed heart, bathing in the sticky ooze.

He need only let her in. She wants this too.

_< <Let her see us. Let her see her legacy in full. **Do not hold back**.>>_

Her eyes are radiant orbs in the murky gloom. The city seems to fade away, all else a muted grey and cyan sheen against her soul’s glowing beauty.

As if hearing him, she placed her head against the crystal now, nuzzling into it.

“Please, let me see.”

“ _Very well… if you insist_.”

She had broken him. Now it was time he returned the favour.

***

He led her into the Capitol, lights set low and retreating from his presence, towards the door where she and her friends had spoken with him in bitterness, before their battle. She held firmly to his claws, following close behind, cradled in turn by tender tendril’s touch, moving around her from many angles.

They stopped before the large, ornate threshold.

“Hades?”

He turned to look down at her.

“ _Yes, Azem_?”

“Come close, before you do what it is you intend.” She beckoned him to lower his face to hers. This he did, bending his uneven body downward to be level to her mortal frame.

“Close your eyes.”

“ _All of them_?”

“All of them.”

Another request accepted, with eyes shutting softly, waiting.

Her lips now placed upon the golden eye, and then, each of the rest in turn, gentle and affectionate. Taking several moments to find them all and give them their due.

A final kiss now, upon his lips, lingering in embrace. Both of them smiling, his eyes moist with purple oozing tears at the passing of her lips.

He had nothing left to give, and yet, she was here all the same, as tender as the day they had met, so long ago.

The keening of the elder tongue rose now, weaving echoes in their souls.

<<” _You are everything_.”>>

<<”So are you, my star’s heart.”>>

She remembers even this. The speech of ancient days. Their shared heritage.

She is worthy of his gifts, even if she yet lacks the completeness of her soul.

It is time.

<<” _Come, my shadow. Come follow me_.”>>

He snapped his clawed fingers, and the doors opened. No flames this time, nor Final Days, only a vast, open void, black as pitch. He passed from her grasp into it now, and bade her follow, which she did without hesitation, the door closing behind them.

***

Time seemed now to freeze, and lose itself, as the robe fell away entirely in this space and disintegrated. The remaining pieces of his mortal visage beginning to give way to a shadowy mass, not like the form he had worn in their duel. Something not unlike a vast hooded figure instead, made of hundreds of shadows writhing and snaking among themselves, each possessed of a single red eye. His sole golden eye fixed unerringly upon her as the tendrils now enveloped her bodily.

Within that space was only darkness. Only him. Into her eyes, her ears, her mouth and chest and parts beyond, he entered, and greedily took his fill. The flesh of her body convulsing, sometimes violently, as the rigors of his longing came fully to burst, again and again, streaming himself into her. Tendrils of shadow pulsing through her soul and flowing across her every straining ilm of skin.

Longing for her to remember a life unattached to fleeting mortal dimensions. For her to remember how once they had travelled together, not through space but through the liminal places beneath it, where the Ancients had come to see the full nature of their Star and revel in it.

She passively relented to this embrace, feeling no pain, only great pleasure. Enraptured by his constant, unending stream of consciousness, pouring a waterfall of emotion into the pores of her failing flesh as it gradually gave way to solid light, the soul beneath expanding gradually to revel in turn with his heart’s beat. Flowing freely between the folds of his shadows, a sea of shifting contrasts.

_< <Call out to me, my love. Open your heart to us again. Duty never really ends, but it need not be seen out all alone.>>_

<<I hear you, my love. I open my heart to yours again, as I did in elder days. My wandering never really ends, but it need not be a road I walk all alone.>>

Her light gradually coalesced anew into a small silhouette of her mortal form, featureless and standing in the sea of darkness, now regarded by this golden eye. Tendrils snaking along her brightness, and then entering her anew, changing the colour from white to blue to purple to red and many other colours. The shadows that entered came to leave her changed, a kaleidoscope of colour staining black tentacle forms with rainbows, kissed by her embrace. She shuddered and sighed, finding her answers within each entry and thrusting force.

Remembering herself with every orgasm he brought in his endless nature.

Again and again, he bathed in her, and gave into her entirely, releasing of his soul again and again into her, to fill her and help her find her way. Before long, his shadows had become more alike a painting, stained by her and changed, something more like what they had been in the days of their youth, before the world had broken them both so much. Here they now returned, and remembered together what they had been, all barriers falling away. Masks cast aside.

The scene gradually shifted now to something more solid, as they desired once more the touch of each other’s flesh. His form coalesced as it had been a moment ago, a twin duality now regarding in his claws her mortal form changed from this exchange into something not unlike a sin eater. Her will whole, but her body an alabaster white stained with his caress, covered in purple ooze and shadowy creases. A porcelain doll, fragile but holding fast to him. Sapphire blue eyes looking up to him.

She parted from him for a moment, to his surprise, to cherish his gifts and dance for him, reveling in her memories, and in thoughts of home. The masquerades of Amaurot long gone, and the way that they had once danced in the company of their people. Their friends. He was entranced, watching her strut and fret upon his stage, tiny particles of light trailing with each gesture of her limbs, her neck occasionally craning in his direction to observe his reaction with a smirk.

“ _You always had a flair for the dramatic, my dear_.”

“I learned from the best.”

She returned after a time to his side, there to kiss his eyes anew, and his exposed crystal heart, now glowing brighter for their exchange. She opened wide her arms and allowed him to have his fill of her fragile flesh, which he did with ripping, tearing claws, ravenous for the light beneath, digging past his recreation of her true form’s memory to find the tasty morsels beneath. Yearning to break free.

He fair tore her throat out with his teeth, but no blood flowed, only her soul’s own ooze, a bright azure blue. Sparking ambrosia for his pleasure. He drank and drank, her neck to one side, her head silently regarding with a smile as he took her.

Into the waning white orifices his tendrils drove now, to tear her open anew and let free her soul. This repetition of form and formless coming and going along with their willingness to embrace in the myriad ways they once had, long ago. Explosions of sound and colour, and the soft plaintive cry of her ecstasy, as she was blasted asunder, again and again, to be remade in his image. And, in turn, in her own.

Again to be drank deep, and stain his soul, and fill his every surface.

***

After a long time, the doors swung open again, and the lights of the Capitol lobby suddenly flared upwards again, brighter as they had been when first she had arrived here to confront him.

From the door now came Hades, in his Garlean guise anew, just as he had been before all of this fighting of recent days. The mask firmly reaffixed atop a mortal shell, smirking from ear to ear, completely emptied of his prior burdens. A single dribble of purple liquid staining his cheeks and lips, to which she now presently rose her hands, holding his gloves, to wipe him down and then place the gloves upon his hands tenderly.

She had returned to how she had arrived, her present sharded life’s visage, a mask itself she now could see for what it was. She looked up to him and over him again, their hands together in kindness. Her eyes flashed sapphire, bright as the dawn.

“I’m glad I came home, to you.”

His eyes flashed red, before returning to yellow.

“ _I am glad you came home, at long last_.”

They walked towards the doors leading out into the city, together, there to return to her friends, and whatever future remained for them. Trailing behind him, a series of wispy shadows, tiny tendrils now being retracted into his imperial regalia. Trailing behind her, a smoky light, tendrils of her own now, a memory of the truth now being drawn into her own attire.

They chuckled as the two tendrils came to brush against one another on their way into consignment, there to remain until the next time they had a chance to play, and drink again once more.

**Author's Note:**

> As is the case with my formal series shipping Emet-Selch with my Warrior of Light, I italicize Emet's speech here out of respect and admiration for him and to add definition to his words when he speaks in a scene. Just for clarification.
> 
> As a further note for this particular piece, <<>> symbols are used to denote Ancient speech, alike to how Hythlodaeus talks in cutscenes, with their echoing cadence. Used here for both Hades monologue, and for the speaking in this form between Hades and Azem.


End file.
